Monday, February 09, 2009

I Have No Bright Ideas For A Title For This Post

But you are welcome to leave your ideas in the comment section...I might even change the title to my favorite title entry.

Yesterday started out just like any other Sunday. Early and with the usual chaos that is getting our family ready to be out the door by 8 AM.

Yesterday ended just like any other Sunday. With us coming home after bedtime and making a bedtime snack for the kids while they scurried into their pajamas.

It was the smack-dab middle of the day that was off the charts unbelievable.

After church service was over and we had socialized for a bit, we made our way out the door and to the van. Joshua and I had an abbreviated version of the usual Sunday 'whaddya-want-for-lunch-i dunno-whaddya-want' conversation before we stumbled across the brilliant idea of Chicken & French Fries (a meal the entire family can generally agree upon) to go. We ran by one of our favorite chicken joints and grabbed a rather large bag of said food then skipped off to a park to eat.

Our chiropractor has been singing the praises of this small, out of the way park to me for nearly two years. Yesterday, I saw a sign that pointed us to it. By fluke. But when we arrived at the baseball complex with it's two small play areas, we were thrilled to find that it was essentially empty. We booted everyone from the van and guided them towards a picnic table to start our lunch.

It is always a bit of a battle to get the kids to focus on their food when we have these outings. They are so overjoyed at the thought of playing on the play equipment that getting them to choke down enough food to constitute a meal takes a lot of words. We generally set a time limit for the entire trip and tell them they can take as long as they want to eat their lunch, but when the time is up, we are packing it in and leaving, regardless of how much play time they did or didn't get.

Yesterday, the kids were so incredibly wired that we needed them to go play, so we set a time limit on eating time. Then we would boot them to the play area. We had maybe three minutes left on the timer and it was pretty apparent that the kids were not going to eat much more anyway when it happened.

Joshua and I had both pretty well resigned ourselves not to try to coerce anymore food into our sweet offspring and just roll with it when we heard the rustling and the chirping. The trees around us became the rest stop for a rather large flock of birds. And the ground under those trees became the potty for these travel weary birds. Freeman family, picnic table, and plates of food all included.

Splats started on the plates and we quickly abandoned all pretense of eating. As I scooped up the baby and darted our from under the tree canopy, I yelped for the kids to move it. Joshua grabbed up the drink containers and the baby carrier and toted them all off to the safety of wide open spaces.

The damage had been done, though. The back of Sarah Grace's dress was splotched with bird mess, Joshua had taken a hit to the shoulder, and my hair had a new kind of styling gel in it. Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh!

While the kids played for a bit, Joshua and I joked about our 'crappy lunch' and made plans as to how to handle the rest of the afternoon. And his nasty shirt. I had a set of spare clothes in the van for Sarah Grace, but it had never occurred to me to pack extra clothes for Joshua and I.

Or a sink and shampoo for my hair. Fortunately, a paper towel and a wet wipe restored enough normalcy to fake it for the rest of the day.

After the kids had played for a while, we loaded back up and went back to the church, where we laid all the kids down for naps. I stayed long enough to feed Anna then darted off for some emergency shopping.

Do I admit that it took me two full hours of shopping and several different stores to find a shirt for my husband? Well, three of them actually, and lots of window shopping for me....